Tricycle Blog

Thaksin's back in Thailand! The ousted PM returned home Thursday. He's promised to stay out of politics but many doubt this claim, calling it a "political game."
Nicholas Kristof discusses the other genocide in the Sudan in a region far poorer than Darfur.
"Burmese Democracy":
The San Francisco Chronicle joins the chorus decrying Burma's faux democracy in this editorial. The U.N.'s envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, wants a "credible and inclusive" roadmap to democracy. Gambari is in Tokyo, sipping sake and chatting with the Japanese about ramping up their aid to Burma.
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Falun Gong defies the government... the city council of Wellington, New Zealand, that is.
Tum-mo and your mind/body:
In a monastery in northern India, Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room, deep in meditation. Although the room was a chilly 39˚ F, the men - using a yoga technique known as Tum-mo - were scarcely clothed, but seemed unaffected by the cold. Nearby, other monks soaked large sheets in freezing cold water and placed them on the shoulders of the meditators. Within an hour, the sheets were dry.
Scientists who have studied the monks - some of whom were capable of raising the temperature of their fingers and toes by 17˚ F - have yet to determine how the meditative process was able to generate so much heat.
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The global seed vault opens (or closes?) in Norway. (So Titan A.E.!) I wish I lived in Norway.
LONGYEARBYEN, Norway, February 26, 2008 (ENS) - The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened today on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, receiving the first shipments of what will be a collection of 100 million seeds from more than 100 countries. Unique varieties of the African and Asian food staples maize, rice, wheat, cowpea, and sorghum as well as European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato are the first deposits in the icy vault.
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There's so much great stuff to be found out there on the Buddhist blogs. Here's just a tiny taste:
Anyone planning to be in New Haven, Connecticut on April 11th should check out Danny Fisher's lecture, "What Does a Buddhist Chaplain Do?
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Deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is expected back in Thailand February 28th.
After President Bush imposed fresh sanctions on Burma's business interests, The Irrawaddy says Burma's Asian neighbors, who are bigger trading partners than the U.S., need to do the same.
Reuters on Monlam Chenmo, Tibet's Great Prayer Festival. More on Monlam from Phayul.com.
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We've received a lot of comments about Gandhi, who appears in our current issue, on our Who Are We? page. We've moved all these comments over here to open up the discussion.
- Philip Ryan, Web Editor
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More sanctions on Burmese businesses from the U.S.
Disillusioned with the Beijing Olympics? Try the Tibetan Olympics! The games will take place in Dharamsala from may 15th to 25th. The torch relay is currently in Taiwan, with Miss Tibet on hand to watch.
The New York Times looked at the Pew Report and found that 25% of American adults have changed from the religion of their birth to another religion or no religion.
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Just in time for the Oscars, this year's Blogisattva Award winners have been announced! Congratulations to all the winners, including Tricycle's own Jeff Wilson, whose "Addressing Comments from the Meditation Thread" won Best Post of the Year!
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Alan Wolfe writes about worldwide religious market share in the March issue of The Atlantic:
Hindus and Buddhists together make up 20 percent of the world’s people, and high birthrates in the countries in which they are dominant suggest that this proportion will grow.
There's not much more on Buddhism, but there is an interesting graphic plotting countries relative to wealth (the x-axis) and religiosity (y). As usual, much of the preoccupation of the article is with the rapid growth of Islam and the United States' atypical religiosity compared to western Europe. Does secularism grow as wealth increases? It doesn't seem to in this country, anyway.
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Buddhism has had rocky times in communist Vietnam, but now the state-sanctioned church is flexing its muscles at the expense of Catholics.
But it's very different in London, where Cambodian Buddhists use a two-bedroom flat as their temple and community center. They now have no place to gather, after a recent fire.
In India, the government set up a Buddhist center in Kashmir and cited the religion's influence on Mahatma Gandhi, and value as an antidote to the extremism that plagues the region.
And in gratuitous celebrity news, Orlando Bloom's squeeze Miranda Kerr discusses the couple's mutual love of Buddhism.
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The Tibetan language is said to be under siege by deliberate Chinese policy:
The Chinese government is neglecting and actively undermining the Tibetan language as part of continuing efforts to dilute the region's unique culture, a human rights group said on Thursday.
Schools are forcing Tibetan children to learn China's national language, Mandarin, at a younger and younger age and are failing to support use of Tibetan in official fields, the Free Tibet Campaign said in a new report.
"China's insistence on Chinese language in Tibetan schools has failed a generation of Tibetans who now lag behind the rest of China in terms of basic literacy," the group's Matt Whitticase said in an emailed statement.
Beijing hits back.
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Woodmoor Village points us to this post on the Washington Post's On Faith section.
I am not a Buddhist. I've never told anyone that I am a Buddhist and have in fact denied the title on more than one occasion. Even though I have been circling around the stupa for the last ten years, I have never made any formal or official commitment to the Buddha sāsana. I've never sown a rakusu or received a "dharma name." I am, as of this moment, a freelance wanderer through the six realms of samsara.
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National Geographic has a piece in the current issue about Bhutan, with pretty pictures.
Burma fights back at Rambo. Lonely Planet is criticized for its Burma guidebook. The Boston Globe on the world's conscience and Burma.
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A major Pew Research Center study on religion is coming soon:
On Monday, Feb. 25, at noon, the Pew Forum will release the first report of a landmark survey that details the religious affiliation of the American public and explores the remarkable dynamism taking place in the U.S. religious marketplace.
Based on interviews conducted in English and Spanish with a representative sample of more than 35,000 adults, the survey includes detailed information on religious affiliation and provides estimates of the size of religious groups that are as small as three-tenths of 1 percent of the adult population.
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